Shortly after marauding British soldiers burned much of Washington, D.C. and the Library of Congress in 1814, former president Thomas Jefferson offered to sell most of his library (6,487 volumes—the largest private collection of books in the United States) to the government. A deal was struck, and he received just under $24,000. Jefferson was motivated by patriotism, but there was a bigger reason: The man was dealing with crushing debt. How it must have wounded him to part with his books! He was an omnivorous reader, and he treated his library tenderly. TJ was erudite. He was a bibliophile.

I understand because I am the same way. In lieu of flesh-and-blood children, I place a very high value on my library. I have often said that if anybody wanted to know who I am, he/she could do much worse than looking at all these books. More specifically, look inside them. Every one is heavily underlined and annotated, with my opinions, biases and passions on display.

When I came to Korea in late 2007, I had no problems with homesickness or culture shock. However, I did feel out of sorts and rootless for a few months because all my books had been placed in a dusty storage unit in Del Valle, Texas. Now, that—not having a library—was a weird sensation. With time, though, I developed a new one. I read a book and another and another, I started buying them at Amazon.com and having them shipped here, and on each of my trips back to the States I have made a bee-line to Half-Price Books. My selections, pertaining almost exclusively to history, were boxed up and came with me on the airplane. Sure, it cost money and was a little trouble, but I have no regrets. The pleasure and satisfaction derived from reading those books has been considerable.

My apartment in the Yesung Life Officetel features a closet, the top half of which serves as what might be called the RAP Book Depository. These are books that have been bought but not yet read. I have a ritual—some would call it a fetish, but that’s such a strong word, don’t you think?—wherein I open the closet door after a book has been completed. I survey those unread books and decide which one to take up next. There is no special logic in the process; sometimes I stay on a subject and sometimes I jump to a totally new one. They can be so different as to make me seem schizophrenic.

I am quite careful in purchasing books, but, to use a baseball expression, sometimes I strike out. Maybe I realize that a book is too dry and academic. Or that it contains excessive politically correct terminology. I have started reading a few books and quickly concluded that I was wasting my time. Perhaps I was not learning or my patience was being tested too often. 

You see, a book has to be solid and well-written to win a spot on my crowded library shelves. Let me give three recent examples. In 2015, I started on a book about the Greek-Irish writer Lafcadio Hearn. He settled in Japan in the late 19th century and loved almost everything about it. But I became infuriated upon reading his praise of the Japanese government for colonizing Korea. I threw it out. Another example was the bio I had of the famous mountain climber Edmund Hillary, from New Zealand. The first 25 pages or so was too nice and sweet. Never was heard a discouraging word: Hillary was a great guy, he came from a fine family, his fellow mountaineers revered him, and so on. This did not pass muster. I really wanted to know about his ascent of Mount Everest in 1953, but no go. And finally, a book that purported to disprove the Black Legend (wherein the evils of the Spanish empire were overstated or simply untrue) was poorly handled by a female Spaniard who would have us believe that the Inquisition wasn’t that bad, the Indians were seldom mistreated, the Spanish did not enslave so many Africans, they did not ruthlessly extract wealth, and the country's positive achievements have been ignored by historians from France, England and elsewhere. A book has to at least make a nod toward objectivity. This one, too, went into the trash can.

I cannot deny it—I am a demanding and discerning reader. If a book has substance and style, and tells me something I didn't know, I gladly give it thumbs up. But if I judge a book to be puerile, predictable, pedantic or pusillanimous, it’s Katy bar the door. I can be merciless with an author or publisher who tries to get over on me. I hope I do not sound like I am full of myself, but I consider it an honor for any book to have a place in my library. Crummy books belong elsewhere.

What about those books in my storage unit in Texas? If not for them, I surely wouldn't pay almost $1,000 a year to maintain it. More than one friend has suggested that I let all of that stuff go, and maybe I should. But my books? Impossible. When I was a freshman at UT (that’s 1971, dear reader), I decided to hold onto every book I read. They obviously mean a lot to me.

There was a GF in the early 1990s. Let's call her Matilda. Matilda was far from dumb, but she had some ideas with which I could not abide. She used to buy books in bulk and arrange them tastefully on the shelves in her den. Matilda never read these books and had no intention of doing so. Their presence in her home was strictly aesthetic. In our parting conversation, I informed Matilda that in this way and others she was shallow.

There was another GF, about a decade later. Her pseudonym, I have decided, is Gertrude. I liked Gertrude a lot. In fact, she was quite alluring. But upon visiting my home in Travis Heights, she said something that displeased me considerably. Gertrude gazed at my library, and rather than commenting on the books, she criticized the admittedly shoddy shelves on which they sat. 

At home in Korea, I like having my books—minus those in storage—around, I enjoy looking at them, and most of all I truly savor the knowledge and understanding I gain from having read them. Some people (Matilda and Gertrude, for instance) would not understand this. One of my brothers graduated from high school 40 years ago and is just slightly ashamed of the fact that he has not read a book since. A guy I worked with at a blue-collar job in the early 1980s considered me downright strange because I carried a book wherever I went. “Richard,” he once asked me, “why are you always reading?” There was no use in trying to explain. 

I will leave you with a quote from Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator: "I have always imagined that paradise will be like a kind of library."

Spread the love

Add Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.